"for everyone who has seen their life in ruins, and found the courage to dream regardless of it"

Monthly Archives: December 2012

I have read that expressing your feelings in some artistic way may help with things like abuse and so on a long time ago, but I didn’t have to read it to use it. At some point, there is only so much you can do when you are dealing with rape.

Talking gets old and only hurts more. Reading can’t save you from thinking, and thinking about it prevents you from being able to do any other work. There is this deep, bleeding void within you, and you simply have to do something. Continue reading →

Beneath the surface of all storms is the real part. The part with all that is quiet, all that is left unseen and all that is true to our real nature. We would like for things to be clear cut and black and white, but that is impossible. And we have to dig deeper until we get to the truth- the real truth of something. Truth isn’t fair or unfair, good or bad. Truth is like water- translucent, elusive, and always just a little deeper than you can see from the surface.

I spend a lot of time in the past months working on how I felt, and still, sometimes my past had pretty convenient way of creeping back into my life. And all this time- after the beginning of course- I found some comfort in the thought that I was doing my best to recover as fast as I could. And every once in a while, I was convinced, I was not doing even close to my best.

And every time, somehow finding a way to get through the storm, thinking about the fact that I am clearing things up as I go.

Which one was true? Was I doing my best? Or not nearly close?

Neither I guess. Both. After blogging today I realize a different truth creeping up on me.

I have been going for the day, making my best. I have been going through my past, I have been taking long walks-mostly for need to do something. But other than that?

I was freaking out at every tiny problem(still almost shocked I haven’t gotten a heart attack at that rate), leaving everything in mess, eating whatever, definitely not taking care of myself. Future is such further thing that most days I can’t even think of it. Work is impossible. So that was my best at the time. I don’t take proper care of anything, but, at least I’m not making things worse by drinking or cutting or any of the other things that I really wanted to do each time I was hurting. I only can’t control the need to watch TV, but it could definitely have been worse.

Now that I occasionally do even close to the regular 8 hour of work daily, and when I spend a day in bed sometimes I start to feel unsettled, now is the time to really try. Try to take care of myself. Try to be better in my efforts to work. Try to stop having days spend completely in bed.

I want to eat better. I want to do more work.

I want not to be behind on deadlines anymore.

I want to try new things occasionally and leave behind things that I leave hurt me- like the ones I feel guilty about instead of resolving them. It’s the hardest thing that I have done, still…but now…

Getting through the hard blog posts, and the hard memories, it still rattles me, and I need to process- but for an hour. I’m not completely paralyzed for the whole evening forward.

On the surface, I’m still the girl that hasn’t worked for 6 months for no good reason. But now, I’m not just waiting for the storm to pass. I’m also going forward. And I know, with every new day I’m closer to getting out of this, even by a step.

Note: That may be triggering, but I’m not sure. I may have to write it in 2 posts, so the first 1 may be okay.

For that summer, I am like a person with no learning curve at all. Every time I try something- finding job, getting better- something happens and I’m back down again.

I have no memory of that night at all, besides the beginning and the end, and I push that out of my mind in pursuit of finding a job and keeping my sanity at the same time. I’m like a broken clock, I remember and then forget again, and find good ways to explain all strange things and black holes in my memory.

There is no such luck.

Nevertheless, I keep looking. And somehow keep resenting that guy from my house, and avoiding him, and feeling stupid for not being able to pinpoint why I feel this way.The strange bruises fade and I very successfully manage not to think where they had come from. I put the clothes I was wearing then in a bag, and stash them away, so I don’t think about what happened to the zipper. Out of sight- out of mind. Continue reading →

So this has been my least successful and most successful week so far. I pushed myself a little too much and blocked myself from doing more…but at the same time did some work that has been long time coming, work I have been avoiding …well, since I started recovering.

Problem Solving

After I admit to a friend the biggest thing I can’t solve and blame myself for now, I feel waves of guilt and shame and reliefsplashing through me. To my best of an effort I can’t understand how I have turned things around to think that not dealing with problems is helping me function. Although in all fairness, dealing with all I was dealing then, I really didn’t have energy for much more. So now I’m trying. Slower than I would wish for, but it’s better than nothing.

And then it hits me.

My God, how have I twisted my world since that summer. I couldn’t think straight, I was so hurt, why did I think making life-altering decisions then was at all good idea? Continue reading →

Today, I’m in a bit of a slump. Okay, so I have been in a slump for couple of days now. It’s one of those inevitable feelings that come along with PTSD and trauma and so on…either that or I am loosing my mind.

Either way, whatever work I touch those few days, it’s destined to fall apart.

I can’t work. I cry, I obsess over things, and I can’t work. Like I have switched the clock and went back few months. I know I got over that phase of recovery, so why do I feel like that again? All I know is, my life has been change after change for months and I still don’t feel like it’s enough sometimes. All the dark shadows of my life, they all wait, lurk in the corners where they belong, until I’m facing a bigger challenge, and then they all come back to hunt me.

I need to change.

I wake up on Saturday morning with that thought in mind, but I don’t know exactly how to change, before I do some work. Work doesn’t come along.

I’m one of those people that love taking over about 100 projects at the same time and complain of not having time to finish them. Time has thought me nothing. The lesson of knowing when to say no is completely wasted on me.

Today, I order my room a tiny bit, but in a strange way, it’s a completely new, and unknown to me activity. I order in a way I never have before.

Usually, I try to find appropriate space for all, so that it can be accessible when I get to it. This time, I think first. I box everything that I can’t deal with right now, and/or for the next 3 months.

I cannot sort out all previous memories while I’m reflecting on a particular summer of my life. I won’t get to studying 4 languages at the same time. I can’t practice drawing, get in perfect shape, write, study Photoshop and graphic design, and make earrings. I can’t pull my life to pieces to get over that summer, and at the same time take on learning to cook. I can do some of those now- even a lot of them. I seem to be one of those people that love doing many things.

But there has to be a LINE. I’m learned to desire, to wish, to dream. I’m learned to research. No one has ever learned me to stop myself. Continue reading →

Sometimes in life, you know you are falling, only when you are already heading full-speed half way down the cliff…

Once upon a time, I lived in a different world. It was the first week I arrived in that foreign city, before I was abused. That first week constituted long streak of seeking (jobs, apartments), making payments(hotels, taxi, bus, food) and settling in the new place. I was living on borrowed money and fairy tales.

See, I had spend the last 3 years in my own university bubble, where you spend 24 hours being thought new things, writing academic papers, meeting new people, and being convinced to express your opinion, take chances and be a leader. Or pretty much that it depends on you how successful you will be.

Then I was going back to home, where truth hit me on the head every time. My parents had not had the same chance as me. Whether I approved their choices or not was besides the point. But after spending one semester home for leave of absence, something was forming in my head, loud and clear.

I can not depend on my parents money(or lack of them) anymore.

When I started university I had thought my fight for making my own living would start after I graduate, but it was becoming more and more obvious it was time. And so I did what people around me did when they had university and needed to make money over the summer. I went abroad.

I borrowed money to go, certain in my success. To the last moment I wasn’t sure if I had borrowed enough to pay for my trip, and kept borrowing. It was all set. I was going to travel, work, pay back my friends. And for many people, that was how things went.

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QUOTES from a random post:

" So, I watched TV series instead. Because they were convenient, and colorful, and different, and because they covered that faceless, bottomless emptiness left after that guy had taken all he wanted from my body, and after I had thrown away all that he left of my soul."
---"Coping Mechanisms: TV addictions and Other Disasters", The Road to Recovery